1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to enclosures and data collection for sensor devices, and more particularly to a protective enclosure, which also aligns an object placed on a biometric sensor.
2. Background Information
Biometric-oriented personal identification techniques are becoming increasingly important in protecting personal property, such as laptop computers and cellular phones, preventing credit card and calling card fraud, limiting access to security areas, computers and information, and ensuring security for electronic commerce.
Biometric identification techniques use physical traits, measurements and characteristics specific to an individual. These characteristics include, but are not limited to, voice prints, hand prints, fingerprints, retina patterns, and signatures. Typically, biometric identification and verification techniques compare an individual's stored biometric data (the enrolled data) against newly obtained biometric data when the individual desires use of a protected item, access to a protected area or access to protected information. Because biometric data is reasonably stable and not susceptible to being forgotten, biometric data has the advantage of being persistently available for user identification and verification.
A fingerprint biometric is one of the most widely deployed biometric identification techniques. Existing technology allows the relevant features of a fingerprint to be represented in a few hundred bytes of data. Furthermore, the computer hardware required for recording and comparing fingerprint data can be centralized and accessed through a telecommunications network, centralized databases, and processing hardware, with the result that costs may be amortized across many more transactions than would be the case for distributed processing.
There are, however, disadvantages to biometric identification and verification. For instance, biometric sensors, which are highly sensitive, are exposed to a number of environmental hazards, such as impact and electrostatic discharge.
There are also problems associated with acquiring an accurate image of the fingerprint image. In a typical enrollment procedure, the user centers the core of the fingerprint on the sensor, because the core portion of the finger provides desirable identification characteristics. Due to relatively small size of most fingerprint sensors, often as small as 0.6 inches square (150 mm by 150 mm), little, if any, of the fingerprint beyond this region is sensed by the sensor. During an access procedure, users instinctively place their fingertip on the sensor. When a fingerprint is positioned on the sensor that does not overlap the enrolled image, access will be denied due to finger placement error.